Giant Spider Across the Road

Catching up on photos again... On Saturday we drove up to the town of Snohomish for a Geocaching event. Always lots of fun getting together with other cachers! And we were surprised to realize that we'd really never been to Snohomish before. We grabbed a couple of caches over near the event and then decided to try for some Munzees in the area (in particular, Mystery Munzees, since they can be worth more points). We stopped off at this one and ran into another Geocacher who was going for the cache placed nearby (we grabbed it too), all of us marveling at the bit of engineering we saw at that spot. None of us had ever seen anything like it before.

( I guess that's one solution! )

We ended up heading home right after this... I wasn't feeling particularly well and it was becoming obvious that it wasn't just allergies or a change in air pressure. Plus, as you can probably tell from the photo, it was raining like crazy.

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

Making soda at home

And now for Sunday's photo. A few weeks ago, John Kovalic (the artist behind the online comic Dork Tower) posted to Twitter and Facebook about his love for his SodaStream machine... and mentioned that he was using italian soda syrups with it. Well, I'd been sort of thinking of getting a SodaStream at one point, but had decided not to because all of the syrups that came with it were sweetened with a combination of sugar and sucralose (I absolutely cannot stand the taste of sucralose). So, I replied rather joyfully that I had no idea you could use other syrups and he replied back to me with some more info on how to do it. Yay! We headed out that night to pick one up and discovered that the company is now producing a line of "natural" sodas... sweetened with sugar! Double Yay!

( Making water go fizz. )

Looking around at the available flavors, aside from what I could make myself with Torani syrups (and I was pleased to discover that the passionfruit syrup makes a passable substitute for Passiona), I was very happy to see that they had a "natural" Country Time Lemonade!! Which means, of course, that I can now make my most favorite soda of all time at home: ( Lemon Squash!!! )

Crossposted from my Livejournal

Haggis, Neeps and Tatties

I know, I know... we should have had this Friday night, but it just didn't work out. Our plan was to make it for dinner Sunday, but then I ended up being sick and slept most of the day, so that didn't happen either. But aside from having a bit of a groggy wake-up (groggier than normal anyway) and a bit of a cough, I seem to have kicked the headcold to the curb... so I decided to give it a go for dinner tonight!

As I mentioned last week, I was able to get a haggis from Proper British Bacon, even if it did make me feel like I was some sort of secret agent heading to a clandestine meeting to pick up the secret goods from the back of a van in the bottom level of a parking garage. Now, I've had haggis before and I know I like it... but I've never *cooked* one. Thankfully, I'd made some lamb stock the last time we had lamb bones around, so I had something to use to steam it in. And yeah, while it's cooking it looks as unappetizing as you might imagine.

( Haggis fresh out of the pot. )

It is, however, incredibly tasty!! I made neeps (in this case, turnips... although I think next time I might try parsnips, since I understand they're traditional as well) and tatties (aka potatoes), which wasn't anything I hadn't made before under different names. I decided we really needed something green to go with it, so I cooked up some kale in a bit of vegan buttery spread and garlic. And yeah, I cheated a bit and bought some beef gravy from the store, but it worked out really well.

( Behold the yumminess of haggis! )

Really, when it comes down to it, it's just another sort of meatloaf... prepared in a slight different way. And so, so good.

Crossposted from my Livejournal